Last year at the start of the season the River Kenn fished it's socks off with good bags of big bream. I got Angling Times to give it a mention in their Where to Fish section just prior to the rivers opening and it was named as one of the top 5 rivers in the region.
I was up reasonably early (06:00) and out the door by 06:45 arriving in Strode Rd Clevedon at 07:20 after calling into the local garage for a pasty and drink. I had an idea of where I wanted to fish and was surprised to only find two anglers halfway down the stretch toward the sea wall. They had slept out all night after pre-baiting two swims but only had a hybrid to show for their efforts. I settled on a fairly wide swim, think it was peg 24 and on a bend, the wooden peg was still there but the number unreadable.
I had the tackle with me but chose to set up a waggled and a feeder rod. There was little or no flow and a slight downstream breeze.
My waggler float was a 3AA clear drennan crystal on 4lb main line with 2 bulk no.8's and a no. 10 below on the 0.13 hook length to a 18 forged hook.
I was fishing by 08:30 ish and began on the waggler loose feeding hemp and caster with double red maggot on the hook. After about 30 minutes I had a small dip in the float but missed the bite. 15 minutes later I had a better bite and missed that as well. I was expecting at least a perch early on but was beginning to wonder.
Around 09:30 the float sailed away and I knew from the resistance on the other end it was a bream. at this point a guy came along and stopped to watch, he had been a freshwater angler and knew the Kenn well but was now a sea fisherman. My maver elite 13 foot match rod handled the bream brilliantly and after 5 minutes it was netted.
My first fish of the 2016 river season
I kept feeding just a few caster and grains of hemp and after 10 minutes I had another bream, bit bigger this time and around 5lbs. It was great catching this size of fish on the waggler in 7' of water.
Club Secretary Barry Fowler came down and asked me how I was getting on and was pleased to hear the bream where about. Barry settled in a peg a few pegs upstream. By 10:30 and just as a friend came down to see how the Kenn fishes this time of year I landed bream number 6. As he sat down only a few minutes passed when he noticed Barry was landing a bream on the pole.
I added one more bream before noon and the waggler became impossible to fish as the wind change to an upstream one and much stronger. I did have a few chucks on the straight lead and the feeder but got bored.
Barry had been adding a few more bream on the pole so I decided to set it up. No bream but I had a few good eels.
I called it a day around 14:00 and was happy with my 7 good fish for around 35lbs.
Good start to the river season
When I left barry had 6 plus a few big eels.
The Club have a match on the river on Sunday 19th June so looking forward to that.
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